I hate being sick. It doesn’t happen very often, but when I do, I sure do it up right.

This time, it was a direct result of the pain that was induced to my legs and lungs last weekend. I think I mentioned it on here during the BFL write-up, but in case you missed it, I had a bit of a cold the week leading up to the BFL. I didn’t think it was a big deal, and I thought I was over it when I did the race.

In fact, I was not over it, and the race didn’t do me any favors. I again, felt kinda crappy monday morning, and by tuesday morning, had a sharp stabbing pain in my chest when I filled my lungs more than about 1/3 full. A doctor visit ensued and the diagnosis was pleurisy.

Basically it’s an inflammation of the pleura, or tissue around the lungs. The doc didn’t think it was anything related to an infection, so the treatment was no strenuous activity until it goes away and heavy dosages of anti-inflammatories to keep the pain down and let my lungs fill again.

Think 8 advil a day. That’s what I mean by heavy dosage.

So, staring down the barrel of a long weekend of no real riding, I set about getting some work done around the house, and preparing for the 2009 edition of cruiser nation on saturday. I figured I would take it super-easy (like walking) up lower moto, and then 5-10 minutes of downhilling a cruiser wasn’t gonna kill me.

Cruiser Nation went off as usual. There was booze, there was balljackery, and there were definitely bikes.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the 4th of july tradition of Cruiser Nation, shame on you.

But, just in case you have a legitimate excuse to be clueless, here’s the quick rundown: It’s a downhill cruiser race on lower moto. Everyone’s got a bit different interpretation of the rules, but the general jist is: 1 speed, no suspension (unless it’s a springer fork), flat pedals, and one brake. It’s a walking lemans start, and you get rocks thrown at you if you run. No holds-barred, all out race to the bottom for a bitchin’ trophy and all the glory associated with the win.

The usual suspects were there, including the great Bobby Dean and his extra-special brand of awesome.

The start went down in typical unorganized fashion. Everyone had finished their beers, somebody yelled “go” out of nowhere, a couple people took off, we threw some rocks and followed them.

Yet again, I was plagued by lack of preparation and dropped my chain about 1/4 mile into the race. After dropping it a couple more times, I stopped about 3/4 the way down and had a beer with the spectators and watched the end of the crowd come through.

Keith took the race again (I think somebody told me this makes a three-peat), and we all had some laughs and some beers.

Oh yeah, and shawn showed us the goods.

Sorry ladies, he’s taken.

We eventually made our way back to my place, proceeded to grill up some more food and polished off ten gallons of homebrew and made a sizeable dent in another 5 of skinny dip. As expected, good times were had by all.

I spent sunday reorganizing the gear room, as we had reached critcal mass on bikes (we’re up to 13 now). It ended up taking me a good chunk of the day, along with a trip to home depot for a gross of ceiling hooks, but it’s done, and it’s a beautiful sight.

13 bikes, 2 unicycles, 1 frame, 3 pairs of skis, two snowboards, 1 homebrewery, 1 kegerator, 2 crash pads, work bench, massive amounts of tools, massive amounts of camping gear. All organized with room to spare.

I give it two weeks before it migrates back towards chaos. Hopefully I will prove myself wrong.

It was a good weekend, but I’m itching to get back on the bike. I felt good yesterday, and I’m feeling good today, but I’m still a bit leery about jumping back in too soon. I may try an easy spin on the road bike and see how that works out after work today. We shall see.

Hope everyone had a good fourth. Keep rollin.